We know from experience that having an ill-organized, filthy, messy garage does not lend itself well to productivity. Having a place for everything, adequate lighting and elbow room makes for a much more pleasant wrenching experience. Thus, Jack Olsen, based out of Los Angeles, must really enjoy working on his 1972 Porsche 911. He recently sent us a couple photos and a video of his garage, along with the writeup below:

The garage is 20×22, and it was done pretty much all on the cheap and all DIY. The lighting is mostly CFL bulbs, some in $5 trouble-light housings, but also a couple of Ikea pendant lamps and even three pendant lamps that are made of aluminized steel cake pans. Everything in the place is home-made, second-hand or repurposed. The big cabinets are made by Strong Hold and are awesomely overbuilt.

Each shelf is rated to hold 1,900 pounds. They’re expensive new, but I picked them up used. There are some Vidmar cabinets in the center, which I matched with an Ikea butcher block top to make a kind of center island bench. The free-standing bench in the opening to the garage is home-made. I curved that steel piece myself and added a second-hand length of Maple butcher block. I’ve got one table on the car side that folds down to hold my router table and miter saw. The steel table next to it folds down for welding. The sink area was made out of a Strong Hold cabinet that I cut into pieces and turned into two smaller cabinets, a counter-top and also those mailbox-style cabinets up above it.

The lift is a second-hand Vestil hydraulic table that I paid $455 for. I submerged it 8″ under the surface of the garage on an 8″ reinforced pad that I poured. It’s flush with the floor now, and I was able to tile it to match.

The car is also a mutt/mix. It’s a 1972 911 flared like the 73 RSR. It’s got brakes from an 86 Turbo, a magnesium transaxle from a 1977 model, an engine from a 1995 993, and a mostly custom suspension. It’s a street car that also gets tracked eight or so times a year. All the body panels except the roof are fiberglass. All the windows except the windshield and the roll-ups are Lexan. It was featured in Excellence six years ago.

Now, while we dream about those jumbo-sized garages that always appear in coffee table books, just like every other car guy, Jack’s garage contains plenty of inspiration for those of us who will never have much more than a two-car to mess around with. Thanks, Jack!

44 Responses to “Jack’s 12 Gauge Garage”

Inspiring. I’m about to do my similar sized garage and need to DIY on the reuse/repurpose budget. I like that rotary phone. We still had one at our salvage yard until the end of 2009.
Excellent stuff Mr. Olsen.

I thought the lamps were attached to the garage door, too…at first. But after studying the video clip, I see that the forward ceiling lamps are suspended from metal arms that are mounted near the walls and reach toward the center of the garage. The garage door moves in the narrow gap between the ceiling and the arms…a very clever idea I plan to incorporate in my own garage.

This garage is fantastic. I appreciate it even more knowing that a huge check wasn’t thrown at somebody to create it. This garage is clever, innovative, smart to use, and smartly styled. The colors and materials, from the tile to the butcher block table to the lighting fixtures noted above, just quality work. Thanks, Hemmings, for posting this, and thanks to the owner for sharing it. It’s inspiring.

I appreciate your concern, B. And I’m very leery about encouraging anyone to use a potentially life-threatening tool for anything other than what it was specifically designed for. I talked to a number of engineers about this type of use in working out whether it would be viable.

A table like this actually has more safety mechanisms in place than an automotive lift. Toe guards are one, which arrest downward progress if the table touches anything on its descent. It also has a velocity valve in place to lock up the system in the event of a loss of hydraulic pressure. I also use a physical stop, similar to what’s used on automotive lifts, which is a redundant way to prevent descent in the event of a problem. Automotive lifts are not designed to carry their load for long stretches of time on their cylinders; this table is. Automotive lifts are not designed to support dynamic loads, or to operate the hydraulics non-stop for 30 minutes at a time, or to take repeated hits from forklifts in the course of their daily operation. This table is.

I would not recommend this for other users, outside of a very narrow set of parameters. But I do not believe this is a dangerous use of this particular tool.

Nice work Jack! I have a similar workspace with all the furnishings home-made, second-hand or repurposed. It has been tremendously satisfying building the workspace without buying anything new and creatively reusing stuff.

I found old “awesomely overbuilt” furnishings at university and municipal surplus sales. Heavy lab tables, heavy gauge steel cabinets & shelves, lighting, clocks, safety equip. etc… I built shelving and work benches from used industrial equipment pallets and crates. I salvaged the pallets & crates from a local Bobcat dealer’s junk pile.

With a coat of farm implement paint it all looks like something from a garage coffee table book.

Nice workshop Jack! I’ve ridden with him in the ’72 911 around Willow Springs raceway. Google Jack Olsen Willow Springs for additional videos of the car and witness a lightening quick 1:29 sec lap of death! You’ve got skills in the garage and on the track, keep up the good work!

Thank you, to whoever decided to feature this beautifully done garage makeover. Very impressive, in so many ways. I am even more inspired to complete my own oversize tandem garage. This feature would be a ‘perfect fit’ for Garage Style magazine also, which has become one of my favorites…Thanks again.

If you guy’s can work on car’s,you can work on garage’s.in ’05 I put up a 25 x 36 building,making it match my 1920 Foursquare home.Inside it is wired,wired for 6 speaker’s to hear my 400 CD juke which is on shufffle.Storage trusse’s allow an 8×14 room in the attic with reclaimed oak flooring I pulled up for free.just think it thru,Lar.

A bit TOO neat! I could never find anything! My butter knife (wife) hounds me to put things away, but I always know that what I want is “in that pile over there because I saw it the other day”. Her hobby room (sewing, crafts, etc.) isn’t that neat either! The Porsche is a bit of a mongrel but surely Porsche tail lights couldn’t be too hard to find?

Thanks, guys. The floor is commercial grade ceramic tile. I got it on sale at Home Depot for .59/sf. It’s rated for outdoor malls and the like and has a good coefficient of friction, so it’s not slippery like bathroom tiles might be. With a garage, you ‘double butter’ the tile and the floor during installation so that there are no voids under the tiles. The ceramic’s compressive strength is greater than the concrete it’s sitting on. But if I had to do it again, I might go with porcelain tiles, which are even stronger (and can be found for about $1/sf).

That’s a good point. But a Porsche 911 has a flat belly pan. There is nothing to access there, ever. I have rubber bricks for other types of cars, but I really don’t have any need for the lift for other cars. I’ve had the 911 for 12 years, now. It’s the only car I work on.

I echo Jay Walsh’s comment – this is inspiring! I have waaaay too much stuff in my 2 car garage. I really like the lights at the opening of the door on the bar that goes under the Garage Door. I may do that to mine this weekend! I will probably go with florecent lamps.

As far as the center lift – I still have designs on a storage lift so I can park more cars inside. The center floor lift works great for Porches, the Corvair does have a tunnel that one would need access to every once in a while, however, this one would make getting the engine/transaxle out really easy!

Great Job! Loved the video. Plus the “no personal calls” sign over the phone!

Is Mr. Olsen related to Monk? His garage looks like the work of an obsessive compulsive person. Too neat and orderly for me. My garage is organized, but it looks like a place where actual work is done. I wouldn’t want to take the time to periodically detail my garage when I could be doing something on my cars.

I used to think that way, too. And I did a lot of my work on cars in the driveway under an awning because my garage was packed with stuff. It might not work for everyone, but if you come up with a plan for where to keep everything then you can get the place insanely messy on a project and have it go back to clean again in about 20 minutes. If you look at my thread at the Garage Journal, you’ll see that this garage is used for automotive, metal and wood stuff on an almost non-stop basis. I’m able to get much more done in a shorter time now that I’ve got the shop set up. It’s like having the right tool for a job instead of improvising everything with a hammer and vise grips. Just the time saved from ‘looking for the tool that I set down somewhere around here a little while back’ cancels out the time spent putting everything away and blowing the place out with a leaf blower. I don’t want to sound preachy — whatever you want to do with your own garage is your own concern — but after years and years of having a disaster of a garage, I’ve got to say that the decision to clean mine up was one of the smartest I’ve made.

I saw this a year ago and it still inspires! I still have waaaay to much stuff in the garage. Other things have made getting the storage lifts, but I still have designs on two of them. I’ve skipped the idea of having one big lift for two cars. I figured if I wanted the car on the top, then I have to move two cars to get it instead of just one. I hope to install the bar for the lights across the back I think that is still a great idea! Thanks for running this again!

Definitely a working garage, and his ideas have everything stored neat & tidy. With mine, I didn’t want a working garage, so I decorated it in a total ’50′s theme, and a ’50′s diner combined. Using my spare time it took me 2 1/2 yrs. to build and seats 16 people. So when we have finished talking classic cars in ’50′s decorated garage we just walk into the diner and refreshments are at hand. What amazed me after I had finished was that the movie shoot department of our City put it on their movie location list.

Jack, thank you for the great looking garage!! My garage is nice but not this good. Jack is right, half the fun of building a nice Garage is turning another persons cast offs into very useful garage items. A lot of item came from friends looking to help out in building my garage.
Living in So. Cal, 12 years ago I used Armstrong 12″x12″ linoleum Glue down squares, $1.00 a sq. Home Depot every day price. Every couple of years I have it stripped, re waxed, and buffed. It is easy to work on, easy to find bolts and nuts that dropped, easy to keep the garage clean! It still looks great and yes this is a working garage that 3 cars drive in and out of every day.
I built my 69 El Camino in it.
I can do an Oil Change and not even get dirty doing it.
Nice